184Hb. one lip and of one words. Most, if not all, languages appear to stem from one. [See V. Shevoroshkin, ed., Materials from the first International Interdisciplinary Symposium on Language and Prehistory, Ann Arbor, 8-12 November, 1988, 5 vols; Bochum, Germany: N. Brockmeyer, 1989-1992. See Reconstruction sections in vols. BPX 20, 23, 25 and 32, and The ‘Mother Tongue’ section in BPX 33. Classification of five thousand modern languages is given in M. Ruhlen, A Guide to the World’s Languages, Vol. 1; Stanford Univ. Press, 1987. Fewer than ten cannot (as yet) be classified; Sumerian is among them.]
11: 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the East, that they found a plain in the land of 185Shinar; and they dwelt there.
185Sumer (archaeology).
11: 3 And they said one to another, Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.186 And they had brick for stone, and 187slime had they for mortar.
186Apparently silt at 1185°C, cooled for 20-40 hours.
187That is, bitumen
11: 4 And they said, Come, let us build a city, and a tower, whose top may look unto heaven, and let us make us a name; lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
11: 5 And Jehovah came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man builded.
11: 6 And Jehovah said, Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is what they begin to do: and now nothing will be withholden from them, which they purpose to do.
11: 7 Come, let us go down, and there 188confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
188Hb. balah, meaning to confound
11: 8 So Jehovah 189scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off building the city.
189Whether the scattering caused the confounding, or vice-versa, remains to be decided. Possibly the Sumerian language was invented at Babel (Kish) as the world’s first clandestine language; and then the consequent scattering of other ethnic groups caused divergence of the original language into all other languages, as historical linguistics seems to imply.
11: 9 Therefore was the name of it called Babel; because Jehovah did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did Jehovah scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
11: 10 These are the generations of Shem. Shem was a hundred years old, and begat Arpachshad two years after the flood:
11: 11 and Shem lived after he begat Arpachshad five hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.
11: 12 190And Arpachshad lived 191thirty-five years, and begat 192Shelah:
190The Septuagint adds +100 years to the ages when sons were born, from Arpachshad to Serug (and +50 years to that of Nahor), which is supported by the Samaritan Pentateuch and mostly by Josephus (but he also says Abraham was the tenth from Noah, and was born in the 292nd year after the Deluge, which from the Massoretic text is the year Terah’s oldest son was born). The Massoretic Hebrew text is supported by the Aramaic (except it says Terah was 75, not 70) and the Latin Vulgate (except it says Arpachshad lived another 303 years, not 403). The Qumran scrolls for chs. 9-16 are missing (and only one word is preserved in ch. 5).
191With seven consecutive generations having been 29-35 years old, it is likely many of these sons were firstborn.
192The Septuagint inserts a Kainan as the great grandson of Noah ( just as ch. 5:9 gives Kainan as the great grandson of Adam), and gives Kainan a chronology identical to Shelah. The Massoretic, Samaritan, Aramaic, Latin Vulgate, and Josephus omit this Kainan, although Lk 3:36 copies the Septuagint even to the addition of Kainan (Cainam).
11: 13 and Arpachshad lived after he begat Shelah 193four hundred three years, and begat sons and daughters.
193Aramaic Targums alone read 430 years,
11: 14 And Shelah lived thirty years, and begat Eber:
11: 15 and Shelah lived after he begat Eber four hundred three years, and begat sons and daughters.
11: 16 And 194Eber lived thirty-four years, and begat Peleg:
194A royal name Ebrium is well attested at Ebla, an ancient major city west of the Euphrates River.
11: 17 and Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred thirty years, and begat sons and daughters.
11: 18 And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu:
11: 19 and Peleg lived after he begat Reu two hundred nine years, and begat sons and daughters.
11: 20 And 195Reu lived thirty two years, and begat Serug:
195 Gk. Ragau per Josephus, Antiquities I, vi, 5. Association with modern Ar Raqqah is uncertain.
11: 21 And Reu lived after he begat Serug two hundred seven years, and begat sons and daughters.
11: 22 And 196Serug lived thirty years, and begat Nahor:
196The name is preserved in Sürüc, a city near Edessa (modern Urfa, Turkey).
11: 23 and Serug lived after he begat Nahor two hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.
11: 24 And 197Nahor lived twenty-nine years, and begat Terah:
197A city of Nahor is anciently attested several times. E.g., “The writer [of a letter to the king of Mari, Zimri-Lim, ca. BC 1700] is known both as the governor of Nahur (cf. Nahor, Gen. 11:26) on the upper Habur, and as an official at the court of Mari.” The Ancient Near East, ed. James B. Pritchard; Princeton, 1975. p. 174. (Others think Nahor was in the Balikh River valley.)
11: 25 and Nahor lived after he begat Terah one hundred nineteen years, and begat sons and daughters.
11: 26 And Terah lived seventy years, and begat 198Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
198Abram was apparently not born before Terah was 130 years old (vs. 32, ch. 12:4, Ac 7:4). Therefore Haran must be the firstborn. Thus Noah overlapped Haran by 49 years but died 11 years before Abram was born; Shem overlapped Abram by 141 years.
11: 27 Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot.
11: 28 And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.
11: 29 And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.
11: 30 And Sarai was barren; she had no child.
11: 31 And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto 199Haran, and dwelt there.
199Modern Harran, downstream of Urfa, Turkey, remains a significant city. Evidently Terah built the city and named it after his firstborn, as Haran apparently never lived there (vs. 28). (It remains to be discovered why Terah had moved from Upper Mesopotamia to Ur before Haran was born.)
11: 32 And the days of Terah were two hundred five years: and Terah died in Haran.
